1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a pickup device for picking up an image. More particularly, the present invention relates to a pickup device for picking up an image, in which manual operation of focusing a pickup lens to photograph an image can be effected easily and with high precision.
2. Description Related to the Prior Art
A digital still camera is widely used, and includes a CCD image area sensor or other pickup elements for picking up an object image. Object light is converted into digital image data, which is written to an internal memory, memory card or other recording media. Some types of digital still cameras are manual focusing types, which has a focus adjusting ring for being rotationally shifted for adjusting a focus of a pickup lens.
There are various suggestions of manual focus constructions for the digital still camera. JP-A 7-311330 discloses a camera in which a position of an eye point of a user is detected. There are plural preset detection ranges, one of which is selected for the pickup lens according to the detected eye point. A focus adjusting state for the selected detection range is indicated in a viewfinder as an in-focus indicia. Furthermore, JP-A 9-325397 discloses a camera having a monitor display panel, and in which a numerical expression for the focus adjusting state is displayed on the display panel upon rotating the focus adjusting ring.
Also, JP-A 2000-125178 suggests the use of the display panel which is driven after the pickup, and entirely displays an image of an object near to the rangefinding point for the focusing. JP-A 2002-156672 discloses a digital still camera having a circuit for outputting a distance signal of a photographic object according to a position of the focus adjusting ring. A rangefinder measures object distances of plural objects in a region to be picked up. Among the objects, a certain one is selected by considering coincidence of the distance signal and the object distance. The selected object is displayed on the display panel at a desired magnification.
However, any of the digital still cameras disclosed in the above documents has shortcomings in that a position of an in-focus state cannot be exactly detected typically if plural objects of various distances exist in a single scene. A problem specially arises in a portrait mode to photograph a facial image of a person. The aperture stop of the pickup lens is set fully open. Adjustment of the focus is extremely difficult according to the intention of a user due to the fully open aperture stop.